Excellent analysis.
The point about having step-up tiers is CRUCIAL. As your existing backers get more hyped, they will want to raise their pledges, and you need to give them somewhere to go. They are MUCH more likely to raise their pledge if it's a 10-50% bump rather than doubling or tripling the original amount. Larian's projects have some of the best communication of any KS, so they would benefit more than most.
Another way to solve the "missing tier" problem is add-ons, which PoE used to great effect. Having some $5-$50 add-ons would give backers more options to increase their pledge at any level. You could restrict physical add-ons to backers who already pledged at a physical tier ($125 and above). Add-ons aren't the perfect solution because they're a bit less discoverable than tiers and a pain to manage, but the flexibility can't be beat.
Putting yourself in the backer's shoes is absolutely critical when structuring the tiers, and I think this is really undervalued by some Kickstarters.
Finally, I would love to hear what you think about Bloodstained, which managed a whopping $85 average pledge by having only three pledge levels below $100 ($5, $28, and $60). Was that the right move? Would it work for other campaigns, or was that a special case?
Thank you. Add-ons are great indeed, they add a lot of flexibility and even more choice to the backers. Even though they're not exactly integrated into the Kickstarter campaign itself, they're pretty good in the long run and for those who want to pledge with paypal, etc.
Bloodstained didn't do much of what I suggested here regarding lower pledges and still had the best campaign (IMHO, of course) to date. You can see in the chart from the last page that it was the most balanced and consistent campaign, and managed to beat Torment by ~1.3 million, holding the record until Shenmue III came.
Speaking of Shenmue III, that's probably the only other game that can be compared. Bloodstained had a lot of things going for it, some of which are pretty unique for a Kickstarter:
- An almost dead genre with a lot of nostalgic fans, so there's a high demand for something with almost no supply besides a few "metroidvania" indies.
- Last traditional Castlevania games by Igarashi were released in 2010 and 2008, and that's a very traditional franchise with a large following.
- Project led by "one of the godfathers" of such genre, as the KS page accurately put it.
- With Konami in its current state, Bloodstained was the only chance of having a proper "Igavania" game anytime soon.
- They did other more specific Kickstarter-related things that worked very, very well:
- Great visual design. Their KS page is pretty much impeccable. (D:OS2 is very good too)
- 3 platforms right off the bat: PC / XB1 / PS4, then Wii U and Vita as stretch goals. Being a game traditionally released on consoles and portables, and not something that requires a specific interface or controller scheme (like a RTS), this covers pretty much everyone (only 3DS was missing, for understandable reasons). Even people who don't have a next gen console could play it on an average PC.
- One of, if not the best social media/backer interaction campaign using all kinds of networks and sharing methods. They kept backers engaged and checking the updates, videos and goals all the time, while also promoting the work of backers through fanart, comics, cosplay pictures and so on. Even backer achievements were added. Fans were already passionate, the campaign tuned it up to 11.
I believe this is why the game had the most balanced and consistent campaign: they managed to keep people hyped and promoting the game during the usually slow middle days:
This is something Project Eternity did to a lesser extent with the endless dungeon, but that was a campaign that took more time for the media to pick up. It was still the 3rd big project on KS. Bloodstained became a headline right off the bat, yet still managed to keep a steady, considerable growth. They also had a great last 3 days, which are just as important as the first 3, if not more.
They also did some of the things I suggested/emphasized here that apply to any Kickstarter campaign:
- Digital soundtrack already included in $60 and above.
- Very unique physical goods with great visual design that are very clearly made for collector's and will be very limited. People who made the mockups helped them a lot here. Also included two more practical items: a keychain and a T-shirt that can be used by pretty much anyone, even those who want to keep a low-profile with their video game merchandise.
- Excellent tiers for the $100-1000 pledges, which is ultimately what made the difference for them. Like I said, big donors love in-game content, and you could get it starting with the $750 pledge.
- Interesting in-game content for $1000+. Custom weapons, enemies, portraits, even an area.
- Orchestrated tracks as stretch goal.
- 6 languages and both english and japanese voice tracks.
Here are the stats if you're interested:
As you can see, they made most of their money in the $100-800 range. In fact,
they made 54.5% in the $100-300 alone. That is incredible, and it's why the average was so high and the money they raised broke records.
The big donors made $274, which is roughly the same as Eternity, the one I mentioned as one of the best examples for that. However, they limited the amount of backers and a lot of them ran out pretty quickly. I'm pretty sure they would've made a lot more money with them, but considering the genre, it's perfectly understandable that they couldn't fill the game with this kind of backer content.
It's also worth considering that this is a different, much larger audience compared to the CRPG crowd. As you can see, the most popular pledge was $60, followed by $28 and $100 Console players are used to paying more and they're more numerous, so everything was in a bigger scale here.
From their perspective, for the price of a new console game you could get a special physical backer edition or the digital one with the soundtrack. (16,450 chose the physical copy, 6569 digital)
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As for your specific question:
was it the right move (to include only 3 tiers under $100)? Considering the astounding success, it's hard to say it was the "wrong move" lol, but yes, I do believe they could've made even more money with a ~$40 tier and another one between the $60 and $100 pledges. I don't think it would've been a huge difference, but I'm sure a lot of the $28 and $60 folks would've paid an extra 5-20 bucks for a new tier if given the chance. They were 45.5% of total backers, which is highly unusual (and good), so it wouldn't have made a
huge difference, however.
And the other thing you asked:
"was it a special case?" I think it's a
type of special case. I'm sure there are other spiritual successors/sequels that would make people spend that kind of money on average. A Kojima Kickstarter, for example.
I guess the other question is: can Larian learn anything from Bloodstained? To be honest, I don't think there's much for them to learn there. Console versions could potentially increase funding, but by how much? Console players don't know the original game, the enhanced edition has yet to be released. That would require a not insignificant portion of their budget and manpower. I think they should wait and see how it performs on consoles and then give it the EE treatment next year if they think it's worth it.
The Bloodstained social media campaign was great, but Divinity doesn't strike as the kind of intense cosplay/fanart producing fandom. It certainly won't hurt to experiment with some of that, however. The backer achivement/social media combination was very interesting, and its not the kind of scummy free advertising that are forced on costumers sometimes ("like us to use wi-fi", etc). With the right approach, it's more like a community working together to increase the funding and make the game they're passionate about even better. Everybody wins.
The things the Bloodstained backers pay top dollar can't be reproduced at will, however. Like I said, I think the only valid comparison would be Shenmue III. Even though they did a bad job with their campaign, "Shenmue III by Yu Suzuki" as a crowdfunded game has the inherent advantages I mentioned first. It's not something every campaign could do. Swen is definitely doing a good job and is very well regarded among CRPG fans, so they do have that as a plus already (on a smaller scale, of course).
